rewrite this title The Spreadsheet Problem: Why Workforce Management Still Has a Gap to Close – UC Today

Workforce management software has been available to businesses for decades. Yet according to recent research from Call Centre Helper, around 60% of organisations still rely on spreadsheets as their primary scheduling tool.

Adoption has grown, from roughly 30% of organisations using dedicated WFM tools a decade ago to 64% today. But a significant portion of the market, particularly smaller operations, remains locked out. Licensing costs and implementation requirements have made the business case difficult to close for organisations below a certain size.

This week, 8×8 confirmed that 8×8 Workforce Management is now included as standard in every Contact Center package. The offering covers forecasting across voice and digital channels, real-time adherence, shift templates, and agent self-service scheduling, at no additional licence cost.

Why Workforce Management Software Has Been Hard to Access

Most workforce management software solutions have been designed for large, specialist teams. They require dedicated implementation projects and ongoing administration that smaller organisations often cannot resource.

8×8 CEO Samuel Wilson made this point directly on the company’s Q2 FY2026 earnings call. The average US contact center runs 73 seats, he noted, and the majority schedule on Excel.

He said:

“Simply having a product to replace Excel adds tremendous more value to our customers.”

Hunter Middleton, Chief Product Officer at 8×8, described the issue when the company first announced native WFM inclusion in November 2025:

“Workforce management has too often been treated like a luxury add-on, leaving the vast majority of contact centers to rely on spreadsheets and workarounds.”

AI in Workforce Management Software: Adoption Lags Behind the Technology

There is a secondary gap worth noting. Call Centre Helper’s 2026 research finds that just under 60% of organisations are not currently using AI within their workforce management software. This is despite the fact that AI-driven forecasting and optimisation have been standard features in modern WFM platforms for some time.

Many organisations may not recognise that the forecasting algorithms already running in their platforms are, in practice, AI. It notes:

“AI has been a quiet presence in WFM for years, delivering value without always being labeled as such.”

But for organisations still on spreadsheets, the question of AI-powered forecasting does not yet arise. The more immediate barrier is getting onto a dedicated platform at all. Wider adoption of workforce management software would, as a side effect, bring more organisations into contact with AI capabilities they are currently not accessing.

Workforce Management Software and the Employee Experience

WFM discussions tend to focus on operational efficiency. But workforce management software also has a direct impact on employees.

Call Centre Helper’s 2026 research identifies a shift in scheduling expectations. Employees are seeking more flexible arrangements: condensed work weeks, equitable distribution of unsociable shifts, and accommodation of hybrid working. These are variables that spreadsheet scheduling cannot manage effectively at scale.

Sheila McGee-Smith, founder and principal analyst at McGee-Smith Analytics, highlighted the employee impact when 8×8 first launched native WFM inclusion:

“8×8’s new WFM capability allows agents to access their schedules, track shift changes, and manage availability directly — a win for agents, supervisors and contact center managers.”

Self-service scheduling access — giving employees direct visibility of their rotas and the ability to manage shift changes without going through a manager — is a practical change with meaningful implications for retention. In sectors where turnover is high, that matters operationally as well as culturally.

What This Means for the Wider WFM Market

8×8 has been clear that this is a play for the SMB segment. Wilson has explicitly stated that the company is not competing with enterprise WFM vendors such as Calabrio, Verint, or NICE. The standard offering is scoped accordingly.

That said, as No Jitter noted when the November announcement landed, the move is also about building platform stickiness. A premium WFM tier with enhanced analytics, improved forecasting, and multisite support is planned for organisations that need more than the standard package provides.

What the bundling model addresses directly is a specific failure: workforce management software has never successfully translated to smaller operations because cost and implementation complexity made it impractical. Removing both barriers within a platform organisations are already paying for is a more targeted fix than anything the market has previously offered at this level. Whether the standard offering is genuinely sufficient to replace spreadsheets for most SMB teams is the question worth watching.